Wokeism and nostalgia

So, most people who spend any time online (or in society) have come across the word “woke.” It was a term originally used by the black community, in a positive way. It has now been rebranded by white conservatives or “centrists” as a criticism of policies meant to promote inclusion.

Nowadays, any film with a female and/or POC cast will usually get hit with that label e.g. The Marvels.

I came across a tweet about the upcoming live-action “Avatar: The Last Airbender” series. The original tweet is discussing the showrunner’s announcement that they would be cutting Sokka’s sexism from the show. In the animated show, his sexism gets called out in episode one and getting rid of it is a big part of his development. So it is disappointing that the show will cut that in order to possibly be less offensive.

Then someone tweets this:

Someone else (accurately) points out that the original series is definitely “woke” by today’s standards e.g. strong female protagonists, sexist male gets put in his place multiple times by women, a blind 12-year old takes on grown men and beats them etc.

What I found interesting was that nostalgia seems to prevent this person from understanding that the cartoon they long for is “woke.” It seems he only wants to paint newer properties with that brush.

This convo just demonstrated an aspect of the anti-woke movement I’ve noticed before, but this is one of the clearest examples I’ve seen recently.

People will praise a film like “Alien” as a great anti-woke film, when the sole survivor and main character is a woman. If that same film came out today, it would get blasted as woke propaganda.